


One more time.

by IAmTheNightman98



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: Angst, F/F, Friends With Benefits, Lesbian AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-05-02 05:48:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19192981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IAmTheNightman98/pseuds/IAmTheNightman98
Summary: Brooke has never understood the whole ‘friends with benefits’ thing.It’s dangerous and messy and someone always gets hurt.





	One more time.

“I think we should fuck.”

 

Brooke sighs deeply and brings up her hand to pinch the bridge of her nose. It’s not the first time Vanessa has suggested this.

 

Usually when they’re drunk, or when she’s stressed. Or horny. Or bored.

 

She tries half a dozen arguments.

 

We both have needs, why not take care of them together? It’s alright to do that between friends, ain’t it? Think of how much more relaxed you’re gonna feel afterwards. Plus, it’s so much easier than picking up some girl at a bar.

 

Brooke scoffs at each one, never taking her seriously. But, Christ, if she doesn’t stop suggesting they have sex, with no preamble or warning and such a nonchalant attitude, then one of these days Brooke is going to snap.

 

“You’re drunk,” Brooke mutters, taking a long drag on her cigarette. They’re going to lose their safety deposit from the amount that she smokes indoors. It’s a filthy, disgusting habit. She does it anyways.

 

Vanessa shrugs as she picks the label off the empty beer bottle in her hand, “Barely.”

 

Usually, Brooke would change the subject, but she’s a little tipsy, and frustrated, and she wants to call Vanessa’s bluff just for the hell of it.

 

“Fine,” Brooke says, arching an eyebrow in challenge and turning to face Vanessa properly. The way she squares her shoulders to the younger woman almost feels aggressive, like she’s taunting her, daring her to make the next move.

 

Vanessa’s mouth falls agape and Brooke smirks in satisfaction, she knew she wouldn’t have the balls to follow through with it. “Fine?” Vanessa repeats back to her.

 

“Why bother to suggest it if you’re not going to do anything about it?”

 

Vanessa blinks rapidly for a moment, staring at Brooke in disbelief. Then, without warning, something changes. The empty beer bottle is discarded to the floor and she’s crossing the length of the sofa to climb into Brooke’s lap.

 

Their lips don’t fit together at first. It’s too sloppy and too needy. Their teeth clash as they battle for dominance. Brooke winds her hands through Vanessa’s hair and grips her tightly, holding her in place, making it clear that if they’re doing this, they’re doing it her way. Brooke isn’t going to be giving up control any time soon.

 

Once Vanessa yields, allowing Brooke to guide the kiss, it’s better, but not by much. Something about it still feels awkward or wrong. But they’ll keep going regardless.

 

Brooke flips them so that Vanessa is on her back on their lumpy, uncomfortable sofa, then slips between her legs. Vanessa wines into Brooke’s mouth as she tugs on her hair. Their roaming hands pull at one another’s clothes. Nothing is removed, simply shifted for better access. Brooke slips her hand beneath the waistband of Vanessa’s leggings as Vanessa yanks down the material of Brooke’s vest to swirl her tongue around her nipple.

 

They fuck hard and fast and unexpectedly. More hurried than Brooke would’ve wanted. It’s not her usual style, no gentle kisses or gradual build up, but it has to be this way. Because if they slow down there would be time to think, and if they start to think then they will realise what they’re doing. If their minds catch up with their bodies, this would have to stop.

 

And that can't happen.

 

So they don’t slow down. It builds too fast and it ends too soon and Vanessa cries out Brooke’s name as she comes,  but Brooke wishes she wouldn’t have.

 

-x-

 

It’s never acknowledged. And just as Brooke expects, things don’t go back to how they were before. There’s a heavy tension in the air akin to anticipation. Like they’re both waiting to see what the other will do next.

 

A week after that night, Vanessa slips into Brooke’s bed.

 

Brooke hears her coming. Tiptoeing down the hallway, thinking she’s being quiet. Hovering anxiously outside the door. But when the door creaks open and Vanessa pads across the floor, Brooke doesn’t say anything.

 

As Vanessa shuffles up behind her, pressing their bodies together, and ghosts her lips over the back of her neck, Brooke still doesn’t say anything. Vanessa’s palm pressed flat against Brooke’s stomach feels cold, yet soft. She slides her hand beneath Brooke’s t-shirt and and traces delicate patterns on her abdomen.

 

Brooke sucks in a ragged breath, but doesn’t move Vanessa’s hand. “This is a terrible idea,” she says, and doesn’t know whether she’s talking to Vanessa or to herself.

 

“I know,” Vanessa whispers, then plants a hot, wet kiss on the back of Brooke’s neck.

 

Brooke covers Vanessa’s small hand with her own and guides it down to the hem of her panties. “We shouldn’t do this,” she tells her, as their joined hands dip beneath the waistband.

 

“Stop me, then,” Vanessa challenges, grazing two fingers over Brooke’s clit, “tell me to leave.”

 

Brooke uses her own hand to press Vanessa’s fingers down harder. Gasps softly at the sensation.

 

She’s supposed to tell Vanessa to leave. She not supposed to let this happen again. But then Vanessa is sucking her neck as the vulgar, wet sound of Brooke getting fucked fills the otherwise silent room and somehow she forgets what she’s supposed to be doing.

 

Then she turns around to return the favour twice as hard and Brooke has to clamp her hand over Vanessa’s hand as she comes to stop her from screaming her name again.

 

-x-

 

It happens again a week later when Brooke has had a bad day at work and comes home stressed beyond belief.

 

“I can help with that,” Vanessa purrs, almost teasingly, but minutes later she’s going down on Brooke right there in the kitchen. She has bruises on her knees for days afterwards.

 

The following week, when Vanessa gets into a fight with one of her friends and comes home with a pent up rage, and Brooke mockingly repeats her own words back to her - I can help you with that - it somehow ends with Brooke bending Vanessa over the back of the couch and fingering her senseless.

 

After that, it doesn’t stop.

 

They live together. They have sex. They don’t talk about it.

 

-x-

 

Part of their lives somehow manages to stay somewhat normal. They chat about the inconsequential gossip of their relative work places. They do their grocery shopping on Saturday mornings and watch shitty movies on Sunday night. Except sometimes now when they’re sitting on the couch together, they will share a moment of knowing eye contact. Then Vanessa is crawling across the couch and into Brooke’s lap and they fuck right there and then.

 

But they still don't talk about it.

 

There are certain implications that come with what they’re doing that Brooke can’t bring herself to unpack.

 

She hasn’t fucked anyone else in two months, but sometimes she feels like she wants to. It’s not that the sex with Vanessa isnt great, because it is. It’s the fact that if Brooke isn’t sleeping with someone else, by the very definition that means she’s exclusive with Vanessa. And they live together. And somehow Brooke, who’s sworn herself off relationships, has found herself by accident in a goddamn domestic partnership.

 

So she does it. She goes out and she gets drunk and she fucks a stranger. And maybe when she comes she moans Vanessa’s name instead of the name of the girl beneath her. But it doesn’t mean anything.

 

The following morning when she gets home with hickeys on her neck, wearing the same dress as the night before, she sees Vanessa’s face fall and her tiny hands start to clench into fists at her sides. But its not fucking fair because Brooke never signed up for any of this and yet somehow she’s still the bad guy. She’s always the bad guy.

 

She’s in the shower, midway through scrubbing away the scent from the night before off her skin when she snaps and punches the tile wall so hard it bloodies her knuckles.

 

But as she watches the drops of crimson blood swirling down the shower drain, she refuses to let herself cry.

 

-x-

 

They’re in Vanessa’s bed this time. Brooke has one hand on the pillow bracing herself as she fucks Vanessa with the other. Vanessa’s eyes are squeezed tightly shut as she clutches the comforter in her hands and arches her back to meet Brooke’s thrusts.

 

Sometimes, Brooke feels ridiculous at how easily she gives in to this. She’s careful, she plans things, and even when she doesn’t plan things she at least thinks them all the way through first. But with Vanessa, there’s no room for thinking. Only instinct and feeling and fucking.

 

“Brooke,” Vanessa moans as she comes, and her eyes snap open, seemingly looking directly into Brooke’s soul. As if somehow this isn’t just fucking. As though she’d been lost and searching for something for a very long time and Brooke is that something.

 

When Brooke comes, she’s still thinking about that look. Vanessa had looked at her like she’s some kind of salvation. Like she’s all that she wants.

 

Brooke wonders how she looks at Vanessa.

 

-x-

 

“Are we ever gonna talk about it?” Vanessa slurs, nightclub music blaring harshly in the background.

 

“I can’t hear you. Talk to me when you get home,” Brooke tells her, hoping that by that point Vanessa will be too drunk to remember this conversation ever happened.

 

“Bullshit, mami,” she yells., “I know you heard me.”

 

Brooke sighs. She thinks about just disconnecting the call, but she knows Vanessa will just call back. Over and over and over again until Brooke caves.

 

“What are we doing?” Vanessa asks so softly that it breaks Brooke’s heart. And like a petulant child, all Brooke wants to do is scream at Vanessa that she started it.

 

She doesn’t answer the question. Instead, she answers the one that she wants to answer. “I don’t know what I want. Or how I’m supposed to feel.”

 

Vanessa scoffs, “Either you want me or you don’t.”

 

“‘Ness, it isn’t as simple as that.”

 

“Why ain’t it?” Vanessa yells harshly.

 

Brooke doesn’t have an answer, so she stays silent, listening to the sound of Vanessa’s ragged breathing. She shouldn’t have to explain herself. Some people just aren’t made for relationships and Brooke is one of them. She never asked for this.

 

She forgets that Vanessa is still on the phone until she hears her sniffling. And then, the three words that pierce Brooke’s hears like a searing hot knife. The three words that Brooke always knew would end this.

 

Except it comes as five.

 

“I love you so much,” Vanessa chokes out, then disconnects the call.

 

Later, when the sun is coming up and Brooke hasn’t slept a wink, she hears Vanessa stumbling back into the apartment. She listens carefully as Vanessa slams open the door to the bathroom and empties the contents of her stomach into the toilet.

 

She’s throwing up and cursing and crying and all Brooke wants to do is leave her there to suffer - because fuck her for starting all of this in the first place. But she doesn’t, of course. She drags herself out of bed to sit with Vanessa on the ice cold tiles of the bathroom floor and hold back her hair.

 

-x-

 

As it turns out, not fucking is so much worse than fucking and not talking about it.

 

Brooke knows Vanessa is avoiding her at best, or straight up ignoring her at worst.

 

She starts leaving for work a little earlier and coming home a little later. When she does come home, that is. Most nights she says over at one of their friend’s houses, because God forbid she would ever have to look Brooke in the eye.

 

Brooke hates being the villain. She can see them now, sitting around drinking tequila shots and calling Brooke every name under the sun, whilst she’s at home having dinner alone. To Vanessa’s friend’s, Brooke is the cunt that broke Vanessa’s heart.

 

Brooke the Bitch.

 

That’s what they’d called her in freshman year of college. The girl with no emotions. The girl who doesn’t get hurt.

 

But it isn’t true. She does feel emotions. She does get hurt.

 

She is hurting.

 

And she loves Vanessa so much it terrifies her, and that’s exactly why this never should’ve happened in the first place.

 

She discards her untouched dinner into the trash but as she’s crossing over to the sink, the plate sips from her hand and falls to the floor, breaking into hundreds of tiny little fragments. When Brooke bends down to pick the pieces up, she breaks too.

 

She kneels on the floor, not even wincing at the crunch of porcelain beneath her, and she sobs. She waits for it to stop hurting, to stop burning, but it never does.

 

If this were a movie, Vanessa would come home and find her.

 

But this isn't a movie. And Vanessa doesn’t come home.

 

-x-

 

It’s almost one in the morning when Brooke hears the ruffling of sheets behind her and she can smell Vanessa’s perfume. It’s been weeks since she’s been close enough to her to smell it.

 

“What are you doing?” Brooke shakes her head. Moves so that she’s practically hanging off the edge of the bed.

 

“I miss you,” Vanessa whispers as she creeps closer. She throws her hand over Brooke’s waist, and Brooke lets it rest there, because, fuck, she misses her too.

 

“I’m sorry,” Brooke whispers, trying hard to ignore the way her heart feels as though it’s going to burst right out of her chest.

 

She misses Vanessa, and she’s letting her cuddle with her even though Brooke hates to cuddle. Except she doesn’t hate it and she wouldn’t mind doing it more and maybe she’s ready to just say fuck it and do this thing for real. The two of them, together. More than friends who fuck.

 

It’s terrifying.

 

“I’ve missed you too, ‘Ness,” she whispers back, and for Brooke, that’s practically poetry. She feels like she’s poured out her heart into a china teacup and Vanessa is holding it precariously, weighing up whether or not to let it shatter.

 

But then Vanessa draws in a breath to speak and Brooke cuts her off because she can’t take the chance of letting Vanessa break her heart when it’s so much easier to just hurl the china teacup to the floor and break it herself.

 

“You’re not in love with me,” Brooke whispers into the darkness.

 

“I know how I feel.”

 

“You aren’t in love with me,” Brooke snaps more harshly this time, turning around to face her. “You’re in love with the sex. Or the excitement. Or something else. I don’t care what. Just not me. You can’t be in love with me.”

 

Brooke doesn’t realise she’s yelling until her throat is hoarse and it dawns on her that she’s hovering over Vanessa and she looks terrified.

 

Then they’re kissing. Pyjamas come off and hands roam and its not gentle or loving. It’s heated and passionate but passionate for all the wrong reasons. It hurts when Vanessa tugs on her hair and sucks bruises into her neck. It hurts when they fuck each other like its a fight and only one of them can survive.

 

It hurts when it’s over and just for a moment Vanessa looks at her like she’s the most important thing in the world, but as quickly as the look comes, it’s gone.

 

It hurts when they fall back into their same patterns. Fuck. Hate. Regret. Repeat.

 

It hurts when Brooke realises that things will never go back to how they were before.

 

But they might not move forward either.

**Author's Note:**

> If you thought this was going to have a happy ending, I’m very, very sorry.


End file.
